Structural Change in High Education: Promoting excellence, gender equality and efficiency

Prof Teresa ReesCardiff University

European Union • Structural change in research institutions: Enhancing

excellence, equality and efficiency in Research and Innovation (EC DGR Research)

• genSET Recommendations for Action on women and science http://www.genderinscience.org.uk

• FP7 Projects: FESTA, INTEGER, SHEMEERA, GENPORT, GENOVATE

‘Fixing it’

• ‘Fix the Women: Participation of women in science and engineering

• Fix the Institutions: Gender in the cultures of science and engineering

• Fix the Knowledge: Gender in the results of science and engineering’

Londa Schiebinger, Stanford University

Fixing the Women..

Men are chosen disproportionate to their numbers in the recruitment pool: - in every EU Member State - in every discipline - at every stage in the academic hierarchy

European Commission 2000 Science Policies in the European Union: Promoting excellence through mainstreaming gender equality (ETAN Report)

European Union

• 45% of new PhDs are women• 30% of all researchers are women • 20% professors are women• Less than 10% of Rectors are women in 16

countries • Less than 30% of board members are women

(scientific committees, funding bodies etc)

Fixing the Institutions..

• Who decides what is ‘excellent’ (and by what criteria)?

• How are they selected?• What criteria do they use?• ‘Gender schemas’ lead to ‘male bonus’

Letters of recommendation

- 85% of letter writers & 96% requesters are male

- women more ‘communal’; men more ‘agentic’

- twice as many ‘doubt raisers’ in letters for women

Fixing the Knowledge:Sex & gender dimension of research

Does it matter?Yes!

Sex of animals used in biomedical research

Controlling for sex in bioscience and medical research

• 79% of animal studies in Pain in 10 years included male subjects only

• drugs withdrawn from US market because of life-threatening health effects, especially to women

• take an aspirin..

Killer facts• Women receive a less evidenced-based

medicine• Men miss out on early diagnosis of ‘female’

conditions e.g. breast cancer, osteoporosis..However..

• Sometimes assumptions are made on the basis of sex and gender inappropriately..

Some research funding bodiesnow insisting attention be paid to

sex & gender:

• European Commission (ERC, Horizon 2020)• World Health Organisation• Spanish Government• Research Council of Norway• Swedish Research Council• National Institutes of Health (US)• German Research Foundation and BMBF • Council for International Organizations of Medical

Sciences

Some Journals now insisting attention be paid to sex and gender:

• Lancet• Nature• Journal of the American College of Cardiology • Circulation (Journal of the American Heart

Association)• The Journal of the National Cancer Institute • plus 25 others ..

Recommendations

• Transparent, evidence-based methods to become members of learned societies, journal boards etc

• Funding bodies and publishers should insist on sex and gender analysis in research

• Training in gender tools for peer reviewers and research evaluators

• Train researchers in sex and gender analysis• Promote gender balance in research teams• Attach gender experts to research projects• Incorporate sex and gender analysis in research

Gendered Innovations

Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, and Engineering

Gendered Innovations is a project funded by the European Union, the US National Science Foundation, Stanford University, among others. http://genderedinnovations.eu/

Conclusion

• The concept of ‘excellence’ in science is socially constructed

• The academy needs to address unconscious bias in its culture and organisation (fix the institution)

• Sex and gender matter in research (fix the knowledge)

INTEGER - INstitutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality in Research, March 2011 - February 2015

• This FP7 funded project aims to develop and implement Gender Action Plans in order for research and higher education institutions to create sustainable Transformational Change to improve the career progression of women scientific researchers.

• INTEGER brings together a partnership of research institutions with top level commitment to implement sustainable transformational change to improve the career progression of women scientific researchers, embed structural changes and create a legacy of learning and guidance to assist other organisations in their implementation. The partners are: – - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, (CNRS) represented by its Mission

pour la place des femmes, with implementation in the Institute of Physics and the Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

– - Siauliai University, Lithuania (SU), with implementation in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics and/or the Faculty of Technology

– - Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (TCD), with implementation in Schools from the Faculty of Engineering, Maths and Science

– - Centre of Excellence for Women in Science, Germany (GESIS) will be acting as independent evaluator for the project

FESTA - Fostering Equality in the Science and Technology Academia - Implementing structural change in research organisations/universities, February 2012 – January 2017

European Commission FP7 funded project concerned with:1) implementing changes in the working environment of academic researchers2) encouraging female researchers in science and technology to stay and make a career in the academy and3) to remove some of the hurdles which make it more difficult for them than for their male peers to reach their professional goals.

The partners are: – Uppsala University, Sweden– Syddanske Universitet, Denmark– University of Limerick, Ireland– Christian-Albrecht Universität, Germany– Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy– Istanbul Technical University, Turkey